Posted!

Join the Conversation

Comments

Welcome to our new and improved comments, which are for subscribers only.
This is a test to see whether we can improve the experience for you.
You do not need a Facebook profile to participate.

You will need to register before adding a comment.
Typed comments will be lost if you are not logged in.

Please be polite.
It's OK to disagree with someone's ideas, but personal attacks, insults, threats, hate speech, advocating violence and other violations can result in a ban.
If you see comments in violation of our community guidelines, please report them.

The Rev. Betty Rendón of Emaus Lutheran Church in Racine.(Photo: Courtesy of Emaus Lutheran Church)

A part-time pastor at a Lutheran church in Racine and her husband have been deported to Colombia, federal officials confirmed Monday.

In an email, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokeswoman Nicole Alberico said Betty Elena Rendón-Madrid, 53, a part-time pastor at Emaus Lutheran Church, and Carlos Hincapie-Giraldo, 60, were deported May 28.

The couple have been known as Betty Rendón and Carlos Hincapie.

The couple had been in federal custody in Kenosha after their arrests by ICE agents on May 8.

They were arrested at their home in Chicago after ICE agents took their 26-year-old daughter, Paula Hincapie, and her 5-year-old daughter into custody during a traffic stop.

Paula Hincapie said agents arrested her about three blocks from her Chicago home when she was driving her daughter to school. They told her they were looking for her, but they wouldn’t explain why, she said. She said eight armed ICE agents then drove her to her home, where her mother and father were arrested.

Paula Hincapie, a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, has been released. The federal program temporarily protects undocumented immigrants brought into the U.S. as children from deportation.

CLOSE

Alan Gomez discusses new data that shows that undocumented immigrants in the United States have reached the lowest level since 2007.
USA TODAY

The family arrived in the U.S. in 2004 and applied for asylum at the height of Colombia's bloody, half-century conflict between government troops, paramilitary militias and guerrilla insurgents.

Before that, Rendón-Madrid was the principal of a school in Colombia. She said insurgents threatened to kill her because she was opposing their efforts to recruit students.

The couple's asylum application was denied and ICE issued a removal order in 2009 that had not been enforced.

Bishop urges policy changes

In a Facebook post, the Rev. Paul D. Erickson, bishop of the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, urged supporters to keep the couple and all refugees seeking asylum in their prayers, "as we work to fashion a system that respects the dignity of people and creates a more just and humane immigration policy."

Erickson cited a Facebook post from Rendón in which she thanks all those who have supported her family.